Yesterday we rolled out a new feature to a limited set of people (1000 users) that surfaces people we think may have similar tastes in books to you. We try to find people with many books on their shelves that are similar to you so you'll be able to browse their bookshelves and find a few hidden gems you weren't aware of. We'll continue to refine the logic and once we've worked out a few kinks, roll out to everyone. Please leave us feedback on how you think this should work and if you're one of the lucky 1000 users who has the "similar tastes" module in the right rail of the "my shelf" page, please don't hesitate at all.

Well, I cranked out a quick and dirty / minimalist iPhone interface.

http://readers.livingsocial.com/iphone

You can only do a few things with it right now:

1. Search for a book and update its status (so when you hear about a great book, you can search for it and mark it was ‘want to read’).
2. Browse your already read, reading now, and want to read lists. If you finish a book on a park bench you can quickly update its status to ‘already read’ (all news feed items, profile updates, etc. will be posted as normal.. even if it’s not indicated on the iPhone interface).

Limitations (for the time being):

1. ReadingSocial only.
2. Must have/log in with your external ReadingSocial account (Facebook users: you will have to register for a full account and link your Facebook collection).
3. Not paginated… only shows a handful of books per status (i.e. only the first 100 books on your want to read list are visible). I’ll implement pagination after the first person with a big collection asks for the feature.
4. Must navigate to readers.livingsocial.com/iphone… I’m not going to force all iPhone users over to the new app yet since it’s just an experiment.

I was basically looking to scratch a personal itch… stick the (simpler) iPhone feature requests in the comments section here and I’ll see what I can do. I must admit, it is satisfying to be out and about and mark a book as ‘want to read’ on my iPhone and come back later and see it on my Facebook profile/news feed/etc.

A common complaint is that all book actions result in a generic ‘added a book’ feed item. I’ve now made the feed items less generic/more accurate… e. g. now reading, finished reading, rereading, wants to read are now all disambiguated.

Ok, so everyone hated the emails reminding you to update the status of books you’ve been reading for over a week. I know that it often takes much longer than a week, so I didn’t intend it to be a subtle jab re: reading speed.

I just pushed a change that implements weekly newsletters that include your current read in a matter-of-fact way (so you can update it if you need to), along with recent activity from your friends on Visual Bookshelf (along with a digest of this blog). Everyone should receive one over the next 7 days. You shouldn’t receive any more “You’re reading x, still true?” emails.

Let us know what you think in the comments.

If you do, you're not alone. A book missing its cover is one of the more frequent problems that gets reported to us, so we've tried to create a solution that helps solve this problem. If you go to a book and see that the cover is missing, there should be an option below the cover image to "Upload cover". From there, it's a simple process to upload an image.


Additionally, if you want to upload a different cover for the book then what is displayed, you can add a second image and a small gallery will appear with the new image. With this new function, we also want to make sure we're taking care of any inappropriate content. Under "report", there is now the capability to report an inappropriate image or report copyrighted material. We will continue to do our best in making sure ReadingSocial stays as current and up-to-date as possible.

A frustration we know sometimes occurs is when you add a book to your shelf that you've forgotten you had previously added. The underlying cause is generally because many books have multiple editions, so if you're looking at a book page that's different then the version you've already added, it doesn't reflect. We've started to try and solve this problem by doing 3 things:

1) When you do a search result, we'll try and let you know if you have a similar book on your shelf already. In the example here, you can see that I have added one version of Catcher in the Rye, but in the second and third search results we surface that a similar book is on my shelf already.

2) We use this same logic within our recommendations and no longer will recommend you something that appears similar in title to something already on your shelf.

3) On a book page, if it appears similar to something on your shelf, we'll let you know.

We'll continue to improve this process and hope to offer ways to be able to link editions in the future in a way that is intuitive and provides the best experience possible. Happy reading!

For those long-time users of ReadingSocial, you may remember a feature that allowed you to embed your collection on your blog or another site. As we made changes to the product, we had to disable that feature in order to allow larger changes to work. I am happy to report that you once again can display your collection anywhere you'd like. Here is an example of my collection:



In order to get your widget, simply go to "my shelf" and make sure you are in rolodex mode. From there, you will see a link to embed your collection. This will generate a snippet of code that you just need to copy and paste into the appropriate place. The default size is 450px x 400px, but you can resize it by changing the width and height in the code snippet. One limitation is that, if you have an extremely large collection (over 1000 books), the widget is very slow so we've disabled the option for larger collections. We'll work to improve this and other aspects in the future.

We've been working hard to clean up the integrity of our database. One of the most problematic items we've run into is that many books have been made into movies and sometimes those movies slip through into our database. We know this can be incredibly annoying because people will inadvertently add a movie instead of a book, and well, movies just don't belong with books anyhow!

Today we're happy to let you know that we've tried our darnedest to remove all movies from from ReadingSocial. We hope we caught everything, but just in case, we put a "report" button below each book where you can let us know if it's not a book.

Additionally, if you find anything else wrong with the book, please feel free to let us know through one of the other options on the "report" button.

We released a redesigned home screen yesterday. We had received a good deal of both feedback and suggestions from our users with ideas to make the first ReadingSocial screen even better and more useful. While we have more improvements coming soon, here are a few of the newest changes:

Manage your current reads: We list, and you can update what you've currently been working on as soon as you get to the site. You don't even need to go to your shelf in order to let your friends know you've conquered another book!

To do list:There are quite a few things that we let you do in ReadingSocial, but it's not always easy to know everything available. To help you out, we've created a "to do list" that will update from time to time with new things we think you might like to do. Don't worry, it's completely optional, but they're some suggestions we thought you might like.

Managing your collection: We thought it made more sense to just have one main place to manage and browse through your collection, so we've moved your catalog to be headquartered under "shelf" instead of living in both places. Stay tuned for continuing improvements to the shelf as well - we're aiming to give you even more control over your collection.

Recent changes: We're actively making improvements in order to make it easier for you to share your books with others, find new books, and manage your collections. Keep track of this area to see the latest news within ReadingSocial.

As always please let us know your thoughts!

Today we want to let you know about some new functionality we just pushed live - merit awards. You can now earn awards in two different ways:

1) Earn awards based on your reading and cataloging prowess. If you reach 1000 books read, you become a member of the 1K club; 2000 books the 2K club and so on, up until 10,000 books, in which case you're be a "Top Reader". If you earn one of these awards, you will see a ribbon award adorn your profile picture in certain spots as well as your shelf.

2) The "Community Enthusiast" award is given out to a member of our Reading Community who truly exemplifies the spirit of sharing book knowledge and collections with others in order to create a more vibrant book community. The recipient of the award is someone who is viewed as a leader in the community by others, actively participates on a regular basis, and fosters good will among other readers. The award is given out on an as-needed basis and will be reflected on a user's publicly viewable "shelf" page for all to see.

The inaugural recipient of this award is Mark Woodland. Mark exemplifies the above traits with aplomb and his collection of books is only surpassed by the thoughtfulness by which it was put together. Mark is an active participant in the community and is consistently looked to for advice around application functionality, book suggestions, and much, much more. Congrats to Mark on receiving this first "Community Enthusiast" award.

BookCrossing is a book swapping site that we're pleased to have entered into a partnership. For those of you not familiar with BookCrossing or the concept of book swapping, it's a neat way to find discover and share new books for free. When you're done reading a book, you can release it into "the wild" through BookCrossing and let others enjoy. You can learn more about the service from their FAQs.

Now the home page for each book, if there is a book released into the wild, we'll surface it to you so you can see if it's anywhere near you. Look for us to continue to improve this functionality and happy swapping.

Bebo first opened its platform a few months ago to allow 3rd party developers to build applications. While I'm not sure of the exact structure of the relationship, Bebo struck a deal with Facebook to leverage the structure and documentation of the platform in order to replicate its functionality. That being said, when Bebo's first opened up, they weren't really exposing applications into the normal paths users take on the site, and correspondingly, application growth reflected that. We had launched a few apps at this time and were disappointed in the minimal level of pick up among the users.

Fast forward two months.

In late February, Bebo pushed changes to their platform that greatly increased users potential interactions with the applications, including better home and profile placement. Immediately, we saw a nice increase in our traffic and the platform became much more interesting. Last week we launched our suite of LivingSocial applications within Bebo. Check out the apps here:

- DrinkingSocial
- ReadingSocial
- TuneSocial
- ReelSocial
- DiningSocial
- GamingSocial

Quick post - late last night, we put up a quick metrics page for MySpace apps. It has a leader board of which apps have the most installs and new features will be added as we get requests. Check it out!

[Update] Nick from SocialTimes provides a bit more coverage.

MySpace opened up its application directory for developers to build within today. We're happy to say that we've been able to get approval and launch 6 applications on the platform. This is a nice milestone for us, as MySpace represents a great new area where we think people will love our products.

Here is a list of our apps:
- DrinkingSocial
- ReadingSocial
- TuneSocial
- DiningSocial
- ReelSocial
- GamingSocial

Enjoy.

If you’re like me, you need a better way to keep track of the things in your life. I remember a time where I used to keep a crusty old spiral notebook with a picture of Kirby Puckett on it that had a list of all the books I wanted to read (I am embarrassed to say, that notebook lasted much farther into adulthood than it should have). Whenever I would get a recommendation for a book from a friend or read a review that piqued my interest, I’d trot out the notebook and make an entry. Eventually this migrated to an Excel spreadsheet, but this also became cumbersome because it wasn’t interjected into the flow of how I lived my everyday life and used the web.

We realized there has to be a better way of doing this.

With the opening of Facebook’s API - Eureka! An opportunity to solve the problem presented itself because 1) Facebook was already in the path of my everyday life, and 2) My friends were already on Facebook.

As other social networks like MySpace, Bebo, and Orkut announced their intentions to allow the social graph to be leveraged, we began to percolate on how we could allow people on various different social networks to benefit from the information created by others. Enter LivingSocial . We think the future of successful products on the web is to create a platform where products can be used where you already go regularly - something that plugs into the flow of your every day life and goes to you and your friends instead of making everyone go somewhere else.

What LivingSocial accomplishes (or aims to):

1) You'll always trust the recommendations of your friends more than you will Amazon or other recommendation engines that don't take into account your personal relationships. Think about how frequently your friend/spouse/co-worker says "Wow, you have to see this movie" or "I had the burger at "x" and it was absolutely the best burger I've had". Based on how well you know the person and your past history with he/she, you quickly can determine whether the recommendation is useful. LivingSocial goes where your friends are already.

2) Go where you are. If you're a Facebook user who likes beer, it's fine with us if you use our Facebook version of DrinkingSocial. If you're a MySpace user who like beer, it's fine with us if you use our MySpace version of DrinkingSocial. Or, if you don't like social networks, you can just use DrinkingSocial. The point is, if you're a beer drinker, book reader, movie watcher, or any of the other interests we support, we don't want to tell you that you need to go to "X" site in order to organize your interest and get recommendations from your friends. You can choose which experience you want to use.

3) Bridge the social network divide. If you're a huge fan of Ayn Rand books and you use our ReadingSocial Facebook app, and there is a vibrant forum discussion on our ReadingSocial MySpace app, we think you should benefit and be able to take part in that discussion. To that end, we've made our content portable to all of our networks.



LivingSocial is very much in its infancy, but we absolutely would love any thoughts or feedback you may have.